brenda is dying janey is throwing tantrums laura is barren and molly peed her pants and angela is lonelyandjakeishungryandhaiti isdrowningandbutterfliesaredancingand i can’t breathe. crying is redundant complaining is indulgent so i stare at the embers of campfires and ignorance longing for a moment infused...

You sit across the coffee shop with a white turban, each crease folded with care, undulating like lines in the Mombasa sand at low tide. I watch you sipping espresso and fiddling with your phone, and I realize there are no enemies. Only others who are really us, but for the gap of knowing. If only we...

I wonder about love sometimes. Like everyone since forever, I guess. I wonder what it feels like for other people, in marriages especially. Is this one of the universal human experiences that all people share in their own archetypal way? Or is love so different for everyone, so huge and untouchable and...

it’s always at night the whirring fan the sweat of a too hot day under too hot sheets all that closeness that exposes all that vastness between who i am and who are you my closet renegade my faraway bedfellow the thundering sundering silence between us suffocates me while you sleep unflinching unfeeling unaware...

My friend Jodi lives in downtown Toronto in an area that is grey and raw and leaves me tense behind my politeness. I visited her there for the first time this summer and was in awe of the ease with which she walked those streets, the affection in her voice as she greeted the men behind blank eyes and...

Today I’m washing my last load of cloth diapers. After this, I’ll be tossing small smelly bundles of plastic and chemicals directly into a hole down the hill from my house. And although I admit I’m a little thrilled at the convenience of it all and am pretty sure I won’t miss the nightly ritual...

Gayle Etcheverry's Cup of Tea I haven’t been sleeping well lately. My 3 year old daughter just began sleeping without diapers, and I spend most of the night planning strategies for middle-of-the-night sheet and pajama changes that will result in the least amount of lost sleep. I lose sleep doing...

At the Nairobi Peace Institute, I sit in a bright room with a Congolese man named John. John divides his time between teaching Peace Studies at an American university, doing reconciliation work in Rwanda and Sudan, and developing mediation programs for tribes in northern Kenya. He has a wide smile and...

Lispa walks into a room like a Maya Angelou poem. Hips swaying, eyes sparkling, large smooth arms picking up scattered toys and books without ever breaking her stride. She repeats my daughters’ names with her lilting Kenyan accent, over and over, her motherly mantra. There’s a quiet dignity...

There are two women at the gate. One of them carries a baby wrapped in a faded kanga, a grey knit cap on his head. The other is young, beautiful. With wide full lips and skin like mocha. In another world, she would be a model. But now she sits on the curb outside my gate, her dusty toes poking at small...